1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of body treatment, topical or systemic, curative or preventive, in therapeutic, aesthetics and cosmetic fields for humans and animals and more particularly the treatment of open wounds.
2. Background of the Background Art
The usual treatment of open wounds consists of applying dressings onto the wound. The problem that is raised is that of the contact between the dressing and the wound, and the risks of the proliferation of microbes.
In order to overcome this disadvantage, several variants of devices for treating wounds or any injury or sickness of part of the body of a patient by exposing this part to fluid have been proposed. In general, these devices comprise at least one wall forming a chamber or a sealed cavity more or less hermetically around the part of the body to be treated, and which comprise means of injecting a treatment fluid into the chamber so that it comes into contact with said part of the body to be treated, and means of evacuating fluids from this chamber. In this field, examples such as the U.S. Pat. No. 4,003,371, EP 0 008 719, U.S. Pat. No. 4,432,354, U.S. Pat. No. 4,447,504 and EP 1 089 698 may be mentioned.
In the field of the treatment of burns and hypothermia, similar devices to those mentioned above many be cited, such as WO 01 93 790 or U.S. Pat. No. 5,000,164, wherein the general principle of the device is identical, only the fluids used, the pressure, temperature, pH, etc. in the chamber vary according to the type of treatment and according to the part of the body to be treated. Of course, the form of the device also varies according to whether the part of the body to be treated is a leg, an arm, a neck, a torso, etc.
Regardless of the type of treatment to be applied to a part of the body, the control of the atmosphere inside de the chamber is very important. In particular, the temperature must be controlled, as the temperatures window of the treatment is generally very narrow due to the fact that the body, especially if injured, may not be exposed for long periods to wide temperature ranges and also that the active principles used (therapeutic substances, essential oils, etc.) are also temperature sensitive and may be damaged or lose their efficiency with the temperature. Furthermore, in therapeutic fields, it is important to control the temperature in order to limit or even prevent the aerobic or anaerobic bacterial proliferation. The advantage of devices such as those described above is precisely that they may be used almost anywhere and any time, as the ambient temperature around the chamber may vary enormously from one treatment to another, which may have negative consequences on the reproducibility of the treatment. It is obvious that by increasing the flow of fluid through the chamber, the absolute temperature may be relatively controlled, but at the cost of a drop in the temperature perceived by the person being treated, which may become uncomfortable. Furthermore, according to the active principle used, this solution may become very costly.
None of the devices described above deal with this problem of controlling the temperature in the chamber. It therefore remains in the art a problem to be solved.